"Such a refreshing, original take on cooking!" Moosewood Cookbook author Mollie Katzen

"Jenny's cookbook is full of heart and soul" Chef Michael Smith

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Greek Vegetable Sauté

Happiness to me is cupboards full of all the ingredients I like to cook with, a variety of vegetables in the refrigerator, and a freezer stocked with good meat. Not everyone in the world can buy quality locally grown meat as easily as we can in the Annapolis Valley. Aside from the excellent meat shops like Meadowbrook Meat Market and Oulton's, many of us are also lucky enough to have neighbours with free range chickens, homegrown pigs, rabbits and lambs who like to share.
So this night, we had some beautiful lamb chops from our friends Stephanie and Austin (the kind of wonderfully generous friends that we should all have). I followed a Mediterranean-inspired Gourmet recipe for the chops and wanted a side dish that would cover both the carbohydrate and vegetable aspects of our meal. This dish combines a few of my favourite things; spinach, tomatoes and garlic; with sweet onions and sharp feta cheese. In the coming weeks, local spinach and hothouse tomatoes will become more readily available, just in time for you make this simple and delicious dish.

Place the potatoes in a small pot and cover with cold water. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer until tender, 10-15 minutes, then drain. Meanwhile, in your largest sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the onions and stir often until they are tender and beginning to brown. Stir in the potato cubes, garlic, Swiss chard and salt. Add a few tablespoonfuls of water and cover the pan to steam the chard until it is tender, about five minutes. Uncover, add the spinach and tomatoes and toss until the spinach is wilted and liquid has evaporated. Pile into a serving dish and squeeze the lemon juice over the sauté, then sprinkle with the crumbled feta.

About Me

Named Nova Scotia's Local Food Hero for 2010, Jenny Osburn found a love of cooking early in life. From experiments in making tofu from scratch and perfecting the samosa as a teenager to heading up one of the Annapolis Valley's most renowned restaurants for over a decade, she believes as Barbara Kingsolver has written: that "cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice".
Along with her mother Anna, her sister Meagan, and her aunt Kate, she started the Union Street Cafe in Berwick, Nova Scotia in 2000. Now she is right where she wants to be, in the kitchen of her very own restaurant, making food from the great bounty of the Annapolis Valley.